Dragon Stones (61 page)

T'Sian eyed Diasa, trying to decide if she intended to cause mischief.  She could not fathom why Diasa would want to meddle while she killed the wizard; Diasa hated him for his part in the destruction of Flaurent, and had no reason to wish his miserable existence to continue.  "Fine," she said.  "Watch if you wish.  But do not interfere; the wizard is mine."

"As you wish."

They began walking again, continuing a little while in silence, and then Diasa said:  "Why are you in human form?"

"The wizard will not be expecting me to come for him like this," T'Sian said.  "He will be looking for me in the sky, not on the ground."

"Perhaps," Diasa said, "but the wizard is formidable.  Aren't you more vulnerable in this guise?  What if you transform and take him from the air, while I take him from the ground?  He'll be less able to defend himself from an attack on two fronts."

"He cannot defend himself from my fire."

"Really?  My understanding was that he did defend himself, quite capably, when you encountered him in Astilan."

"He surprised me.  That will not happen again."

"Of course it won't.  But the wizard is a wily foe; he's been goading you, hoping you'll make a mistake, like trying to take him while in human form.  He'll slip away through passages too narrow for you to enter, or trap you in a crevice where you'll be unable to transform."  Pause.  "You don't want him to escape again, do you?"

T'Sian considered.  What Diasa said sounded reasonable; the wizard
could
trap her inside the stone, the way she had been trapped beneath the collapsed building in Astilan, unable to move, unable to change.  
If she accepted Diasa's strategy, it might be easier to corner the slippery magician.

"All right," the dragon said.  "I will strike from above; you keep him from escaping through cracks in the stone.  But take care.  If you are too near him when I attack, I may burn you."

"I'll be careful," Diasa said.

They stopped when they reached the rubble-strewn hillside east of the city.  Diasa could see the outcropping, not far away, jutting out of the ground like a stone finger admonishing the village beneath it.  It resembled the much larger promontory on which the castle had stood, but older and more weathered; its crumbled sides were undoubtedly the source of the rocks and boulders that littered the hillside below.

Without a word, the dragon moved away, seeking her usual privacy when changing shape.  Diasa waited a moment, then crept after her.  She had been roughly timing these absences, trying to ascertain exactly how long it took for T'Sian to complete the transformation. She thought she had a good understanding of it at this point, but she needed to wait until the process actually began before making her move, lest the dragon should see what she was doing.

She spotted T'Sian behind a boulder the size of a large wagon.  It was sufficient to conceal her human form, though of course when she assumed her true shape it would scarcely cover her head. Diasa crouched nearby, watching as the dragon began to quiver all over, her skin rippling and shifting.  Then she exploded, her body bursting into a vaporous cloud of pink and red, green and blue. The swirling matter expanded, flowing across the ground, drifting through the air, beginning to resemble the giant beast it would become.

Putting aside her fascination, Diasa bolted, weaving through the boulders at top speed, heading for the massive rock.  She had run through blinding storms of stinging salt dust and shifting dunes; threading the debris-ridden slope was simple in comparison.  She quickly reached Orioke's hiding place, and spotted a broad, jagged split that came down almost vertically before forking near the bottom.

She glanced back at T'Sian.  Her transformation was nearly complete; she seemed to be quite solid now, and would shortly be able to take wing.  There was no time to see if some other crack looked more like lightning than this one.  She chose the wider fork and slipped into the crevice, sidling along sideways until the passage widened into a sort of chimney.  She paused in the open space, listening, sniffing the air.  Nothing.  She scanned the small area, examining the shape of the walls, the sparse grass that grew where dirt had accumulated in the cracks.  She noticed a spot where the vegetation was bent flat, as if an invisible weight lay upon it.  The stone curved gently behind it, forming a small nook.  A weary fugitive, confident that he would not be found, might well seek refuge there, lean back, and close his eyes to rest.  She hoped that, in his haste, he might have failed to lay wards about that would protect him from the likes of her.

Diasa unsheathed her dagger, knelt where she judged the wizard to be, and grabbed for his unseen throat.  She felt flesh under her fingers; she had gotten him right below the jaw, a good spot to hold onto.  As the invisible being awoke and began to struggle, she pressed the edge of her blade below her hand, pushing just hard enough to feel the resistance.

"The dragon will be here momentarily," she whispered.  "If you don't want to be burnt to a crisp, do exactly as I say."

"Diasa."  The wizard's voice.  "What are you doing?"

"Saving your life.  Now move.  And not a word or a whisper from your lips, or I
will
kill you."

She pulled him to his feet, keeping the knife against his throat, ready to cut with a single motion.  He didn't resist as she dragged him out of the shelter of the rock, but as they emerged onto the hillside, he said:  "You're mad.  The dragon will roast us both."

"Perhaps," Diasa said.  "Better that than to be buried alive like my mother."  He gave a low chuckle; she pressed the blade a little harder and the chuckling stopped.  "Do I amuse you?"

"No.  But Damona did not die in Flaurent; she traveled with you all the way to Achengate, hiding within the soul of another.  You left her there to face me alone."

He meant Wert, of course.  Diasa had suspected as much, at the very end, but there'd been no time to elicit the truth, or for a tearful farewell.  "It was her choice.  She thought she could delay you for a few days."

"You left her there to face me
alone.  
She ensnared me in a false Achengate, an illusion of her own creation, and made me wander through it for hours, searching for her.  But my time was not wasted; I extracted the skill from her before she died, and put it to good use against your oracle."

She tightened her grip on Orioke's throat.  "Enough," she said, moving away from the stone, out into the open.  She couldn't see T'Sian, but knew she was nearby; the great beast would certainly spot them momentarily. Indeed, within seconds the dragon dropped out of the night sky, landing in front of them, a mass of scales and smoke.  The wind of her wings washed over them, laden with the stench of brimstone.

"
What are you doing, Diasa?
"

"I have someone here."  Diasa nudged Orioke in the back with her knee.  "Show yourself, wizard."

He muttered something, and the glamour of invisibility fell away, leaving him standing there, burned, bleeding, clothing filthy and torn.  He must have only just escaped when T'Sian had set fire to the woods.  The dragon's glimmering, unblinking eyes regarded him for a moment; then she shifted her gaze to Diasa and said:  "
You are trying to take the wizard prisoner.
"

"Yes.  We need him alive."

The dragon moved her head in close; Diasa could see each individual scale of her face, and in the ones that weren't too smudged or scorched, she could make out a dim reflection of herself and the wizard, grimy apparitions separated by a gleaming blade.  "
What makes you think I will not burn you both?
" T'Sian said.  "
I
could.  Not even ashes would remain to mark the place where you fell.
"

"You certainly could do that," Orioke said.  "Your makers crafted you well."

T'Sian pulled her head back a bit.  "
What did you say?
"

"I said that your makers crafted you well.  Well, not
your
makers; the original dragons were brought to life eons ago, by ancient alchemists now long dead.  But they created your race, so it could be said that they created
you.  
I
ndirectly."

"
What nonsense is this?
"

"Qalor wasn't the first to make weapons using the crystals.  Many centuries ago, other men tried something similar.  They created a race of intelligent creatures, shapeshifters, that could consume the stones and produce fire in their bellies.  These creatures could also go forth in stealth, disguised as humans; they could attack by surprise and burn their enemies to ash before they knew an attack was even underway.  Do you know what these creatures were?"

Silence.

"Well?  Do you?"

Thinking of the scrolls she'd found in Qalor's apartment, Diasa said:  "Dragons."

"Very good, Diasa," Orioke said, sounding like one of the professors at Flaurent, derisively pleased that a student had answered an obvious question.  "Dragons.  But they proved too intelligent, too powerful, to be controlled.  They turned on their creators and incinerated them, their cities, their forests, their fields.  They boiled away the lakes and streams, scorched the topsoil, and left behind an eternal wasteland.  Do you know what this wasteland is called now?"

Another obvious question.  "The Salt Flats."

"Indeed.  An entire region, rendered uninhabitable forever.  The knowledge that had created the dragons was lost, except for a few scraps of research, scrolls and sketches that found their way into the library at Flaurent.  Torrant obtained them, and brought them back to Dunshandrin, who passed them to Qalor, who showed them to me."

"If Flaurent had had such documents, I would have known," Diasa said, even though she had seen the scrolls sitting on Qalor's table with Flaurent's broken seal upon them.

"These were the most secret of papers, known only to the headmaster or mistress.  They were kept hidden away, along with other scrolls describing mystical skills
—t
elepathy, illusion, empathy, domination
—
that the rulers of the lands forbade oracles to exercise."

This was new information.  "What lies are these that you tell?" Diasa said.  "Oracles don't have such power."

The wizard snorted.  "Are you so willfully blind that you can't see what is right before your eyes?  Flaurent was not only a school where oracles were taught how to use their gifts; it was a place where their gifts were suppressed.  Those who resisted, or seemed that they might become dangerous, would get lost in the desert, perhaps, or perhaps suffer an overdose of vapors and go mad."

Diasa imagined a professor mixing up powder for a young Wert, altering the ratios, knowing it would leave him a ranting fool; she imagined young oracles being taken from their beds, dragged out into the desert, left to die in the wastes. It couldn't possibly be true; her mother would never have harmed her own students.  "What basis do you have for these claims?"

"Poor girl.  Don't you understand?  I was
at
Flaurent, first as a student, then as headmaster; I
participated
in the things I describe."

"Now I know you lie," Diasa said.  "You are not on the roster of headmasters."

"My name was stricken from the rolls years ago, when I left to pursue magic, as well as for … other reasons."  He smirked.  "I knew Damona, when she was young, and looked like you."

Before Diasa could formulate a response to this startling comment, T'Sian brought her head down close, the acrid tang of her breath heating the chill air.  "
You say Qalor showed you these scrolls, wizard?
 
If you were once the master of this place, why did you not know about them already?
"

"I was not headmaster for long, and I was more interested in mentalism than alchemy; those were the scrolls I sought out during my tenure."

"But if Qalor really had such knowledge, he would have created his own dragons, not feeble imitations!
"

"And repeat the mistake that had doomed the ancient alchemists?  No, Qalor was too canny for that; he left control of the crystals firmly in the hands of men.  But Dunshandrin, in his haste and greed, sent us to retrieve crystals from your lair, because he did not want to wait until spring to mount an expedition to Yttribia.  He insisted on striking Barbareth this season, before the snows began, thinking he could consolidate his hold during the winter.  It seems he underestimated your determination, and your desire for revenge."

"
Enough!  You are a liar!  My race was not created by men!"

"Oh, but it was.  Your ancestors were grown like homunculi in vats in the ancients' great laboratories.  Dragons were never meant to be breeding stock; that is why you are slowly dying out.  Most of you are infertile, and those that are not, such as yourself, will produce at most one batch of young.  You live a long time, but you do not live forever; and one day, not so far in the future, there will be no more dragons."

For a long moment, T'Sian said no more; she just stared at Orioke with those luminous eyes.  Diasa thought she might make good on her threat and incinerate them both; but at last, the dragon spoke.  "
These papers from Flaurent
could be used to restore the race of dragons?
"